Following is my Exegesis written about the creation of this website for Web Communications WEB101. Word count excluding references, but including citations is 1019.
Exegesis
For my central node I chose an art themed website, within which I could showcase the work of myself and participating artists, and where I would promote Australian art. Using namechk.com to ascertain availability of my username “heatherian”, I intended to increase traffic to new and existing sites by providing visitors with glimpses of interesting art content and the means to share that content in as many ways as possible. I named my website “Heatherian’s Glimpses”.
Two of Anthony Mayfield’s (Mayfield, 2010) recommendations for success were to create a blog and use social networking and following some guidelines suggested by Todd Stauffer (Stauffer, 2008) I created Heatherian's Glimpses: Heather's Blog and opted to use the popular social network micro-blog, Twitter. Referring to “The Twitter Book” (O’Reilly and Milstein, 2009) instructions I themed my background and set up the HTML Twitter feeds to the blog. Although not in keeping with the immediate interconnectivity followers like, or with social networking’s information gathering requirements, I preferred not to receive/send constant tweets or to disclose my geographical location. I decided not to connect my mobile phone to Twitter, but rather to access Twitter via my desktop/i-Pad and receive notifications via email.
Other sites I chose as parts for my “stage for self presentation and social connection” (Papacharissi, Z. 2010. p.304) were Flickr.com, Delicious.com, and Pictify. I considered six networked nodes were sufficient to portray a positive digital footprint of “a networked self” (Papacharissi, Z. 2010). I had revealed enough information to be of interest and promote sharing, without disclosing anything I might later regret. I realized advertisers’ algorithms would find me but I tried to avoided providing information which might enable any fraudulent activities.
The Web Design Handbook (Diman, P. 2009) provided images which were useful when considering the website’s design, but a standard template was not going to give an opportunity to design the highly successful, individual “unique user experience” (Diman, P. 2009 p.18) considered necessary to instantly capture the interest of casual browsers, so my social networks’ hyperlinks needed to succeed in attracting users to my site. In choosing menu placements and what I wanted visitors to quickly see at first glance, I reasoned the colourful Galleries pages would be more important in capturing attention than the profiles or exegesis, which I placed in a home page sub menu.
The Web101 Web Communications notes on Content Sharing (Leaver, T. (2012) had introduced me to the issues relating to copyright, making me aware of how information may be used without one’s knowledge. I read the terms of prospective providers and selected Weebly.com. They required that I agree to anonymous information collecting relating to my use of the site but stated copyrights to site content remained mine, whereas the others required my agreement in allowing content for their commercial use. Weebly.com seemed a large company with many users and therefore less likely to fail like Ma.gnolia.com or disappear resulting in me losing my content forever (Carroll and Romano, 2011. p28).
I obtained permission to use participating artist’s images in slideshows on my website and set about researching Creative Commons licences in order to make it clear to clients, what could or could not be copied and used in relation to the art, mine and others. I provided hyperlinks to the Creative Commons site and watermarked the art for those who wished to retain copyright.
I also chose Weebly.com for other reasons. It had interactive, user friendly web 2.0 characteristics requiring no programming knowledge and extensive help menus relating to site creation, content sharing, RSS feeds and search engine optimization. Unlimited numbers of pages, a free blog option and second website were all provided with free use of their domain. Finally, it had a large selection of up to date dynamic looking website templates designed to assist content sharing.
Although Jodie Dalgleish advised “testing is the single-most important thing” (Dalgleish, 2000. p.51) needed but not usually undertaken prior to website creation, I was unable to do in depth market and design research, so I viewed numerous art websites and decided I preferred vertical rather than horizontal menus. I chose, according to the Weebly.com, a popular template, and replaced the main image with my own: a watercolour painting showing a glimpse of the Flinders Ranges through the window of an old ruin. I selected a template I could edit, which featured dark rather than brightly coloured backgrounds, as I considered bright colours might detract from the artwork itself.
A folksonomy type tagging option was provided for the entire site and blog, with a separate description and tagging option for each individual page, which maximized the chances of being found by search engines. I tagged each page of the site and blog and tried to include keywords in my blogs and descriptions as recommended in the book Creative Blogging (Wright-Porto, 2011).
Most text creation areas in the nodes provided standard formatting options to share information by placing hyperlinks within text. Some, but not all, allowed buttons or widgets. Wherever possible, I connected the various nodes by whatever means each site would permit and if I had difficulty doing so, I set up hyperlinks e.g. Flickr is a non-commercial content sharing site, restricting widgets or links to websites other than those it supports, but it did permit placement of hyperlinks within the profile information.
Delicious.com was actually the first site I set up, and after creating my central node I re-themed it by changing the profile image, but continued saving Web101 and other non-art hyperlinks I wished to retain. As Delicious.com’s purpose is to save and share metadata content and it provides the means to organize them into categories, I decided to leave them public, hoping that persons browsing the non-art links might become those loosely connected main group outsiders so necessary for the faster sharing of information to new people between groups. Nevertheless, I did set up specifically art themed stacks (only to discover they were being discontinued in August) and have since created some art themed tag bundles as well. I feel I have constructed a themed and well inter-connected Web 2.00 network as required.
References:
Carroll, E & Romano, J. (2011). Your Digital Afterlife. Berkeley, CA. New Riders
Dalgleish, J. (2000). Custome Effective Websites. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pretice Hall
Diman, P (Ed.). (2009). Web Design Handbook. Antwerp, Belgium: BooQs Publishers
Leaver, T. (2012). Module 2, Topic 2.4 – Content Sharing [Course notes]. Retrieved from
http://lms.curtin.edu.au
Mayfield, A. (2010). Me and My Web Shadow. London, UK: A & C Black Publishers Ltd.
O’Reilly, T & Milstein, S. (2009). The Twitter Book. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media Inc.
Papacharissi, Z (2010). Conclusion: A Networked Self. In Z. Papacharissi (Ed), A Networked Self:
Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites (pp. 304-318). Retrieved from
http://edocs.library.curtin.edu.au/eres_display.cgi?url=DC60268537.pdf
Stauffer, T. (2008). How to Do Everything with Your Web 2.0 Blog. New York, NY: McGraw- Hill
Wright-Porto, H. (2011). Creative Blogging: Your First Steps to a Successful Blog (p.165). New York,
NY: Apress.
Two of Anthony Mayfield’s (Mayfield, 2010) recommendations for success were to create a blog and use social networking and following some guidelines suggested by Todd Stauffer (Stauffer, 2008) I created Heatherian's Glimpses: Heather's Blog and opted to use the popular social network micro-blog, Twitter. Referring to “The Twitter Book” (O’Reilly and Milstein, 2009) instructions I themed my background and set up the HTML Twitter feeds to the blog. Although not in keeping with the immediate interconnectivity followers like, or with social networking’s information gathering requirements, I preferred not to receive/send constant tweets or to disclose my geographical location. I decided not to connect my mobile phone to Twitter, but rather to access Twitter via my desktop/i-Pad and receive notifications via email.
Other sites I chose as parts for my “stage for self presentation and social connection” (Papacharissi, Z. 2010. p.304) were Flickr.com, Delicious.com, and Pictify. I considered six networked nodes were sufficient to portray a positive digital footprint of “a networked self” (Papacharissi, Z. 2010). I had revealed enough information to be of interest and promote sharing, without disclosing anything I might later regret. I realized advertisers’ algorithms would find me but I tried to avoided providing information which might enable any fraudulent activities.
The Web Design Handbook (Diman, P. 2009) provided images which were useful when considering the website’s design, but a standard template was not going to give an opportunity to design the highly successful, individual “unique user experience” (Diman, P. 2009 p.18) considered necessary to instantly capture the interest of casual browsers, so my social networks’ hyperlinks needed to succeed in attracting users to my site. In choosing menu placements and what I wanted visitors to quickly see at first glance, I reasoned the colourful Galleries pages would be more important in capturing attention than the profiles or exegesis, which I placed in a home page sub menu.
The Web101 Web Communications notes on Content Sharing (Leaver, T. (2012) had introduced me to the issues relating to copyright, making me aware of how information may be used without one’s knowledge. I read the terms of prospective providers and selected Weebly.com. They required that I agree to anonymous information collecting relating to my use of the site but stated copyrights to site content remained mine, whereas the others required my agreement in allowing content for their commercial use. Weebly.com seemed a large company with many users and therefore less likely to fail like Ma.gnolia.com or disappear resulting in me losing my content forever (Carroll and Romano, 2011. p28).
I obtained permission to use participating artist’s images in slideshows on my website and set about researching Creative Commons licences in order to make it clear to clients, what could or could not be copied and used in relation to the art, mine and others. I provided hyperlinks to the Creative Commons site and watermarked the art for those who wished to retain copyright.
I also chose Weebly.com for other reasons. It had interactive, user friendly web 2.0 characteristics requiring no programming knowledge and extensive help menus relating to site creation, content sharing, RSS feeds and search engine optimization. Unlimited numbers of pages, a free blog option and second website were all provided with free use of their domain. Finally, it had a large selection of up to date dynamic looking website templates designed to assist content sharing.
Although Jodie Dalgleish advised “testing is the single-most important thing” (Dalgleish, 2000. p.51) needed but not usually undertaken prior to website creation, I was unable to do in depth market and design research, so I viewed numerous art websites and decided I preferred vertical rather than horizontal menus. I chose, according to the Weebly.com, a popular template, and replaced the main image with my own: a watercolour painting showing a glimpse of the Flinders Ranges through the window of an old ruin. I selected a template I could edit, which featured dark rather than brightly coloured backgrounds, as I considered bright colours might detract from the artwork itself.
A folksonomy type tagging option was provided for the entire site and blog, with a separate description and tagging option for each individual page, which maximized the chances of being found by search engines. I tagged each page of the site and blog and tried to include keywords in my blogs and descriptions as recommended in the book Creative Blogging (Wright-Porto, 2011).
Most text creation areas in the nodes provided standard formatting options to share information by placing hyperlinks within text. Some, but not all, allowed buttons or widgets. Wherever possible, I connected the various nodes by whatever means each site would permit and if I had difficulty doing so, I set up hyperlinks e.g. Flickr is a non-commercial content sharing site, restricting widgets or links to websites other than those it supports, but it did permit placement of hyperlinks within the profile information.
Delicious.com was actually the first site I set up, and after creating my central node I re-themed it by changing the profile image, but continued saving Web101 and other non-art hyperlinks I wished to retain. As Delicious.com’s purpose is to save and share metadata content and it provides the means to organize them into categories, I decided to leave them public, hoping that persons browsing the non-art links might become those loosely connected main group outsiders so necessary for the faster sharing of information to new people between groups. Nevertheless, I did set up specifically art themed stacks (only to discover they were being discontinued in August) and have since created some art themed tag bundles as well. I feel I have constructed a themed and well inter-connected Web 2.00 network as required.
References:
Carroll, E & Romano, J. (2011). Your Digital Afterlife. Berkeley, CA. New Riders
Dalgleish, J. (2000). Custome Effective Websites. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pretice Hall
Diman, P (Ed.). (2009). Web Design Handbook. Antwerp, Belgium: BooQs Publishers
Leaver, T. (2012). Module 2, Topic 2.4 – Content Sharing [Course notes]. Retrieved from
http://lms.curtin.edu.au
Mayfield, A. (2010). Me and My Web Shadow. London, UK: A & C Black Publishers Ltd.
O’Reilly, T & Milstein, S. (2009). The Twitter Book. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media Inc.
Papacharissi, Z (2010). Conclusion: A Networked Self. In Z. Papacharissi (Ed), A Networked Self:
Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites (pp. 304-318). Retrieved from
http://edocs.library.curtin.edu.au/eres_display.cgi?url=DC60268537.pdf
Stauffer, T. (2008). How to Do Everything with Your Web 2.0 Blog. New York, NY: McGraw- Hill
Wright-Porto, H. (2011). Creative Blogging: Your First Steps to a Successful Blog (p.165). New York,
NY: Apress.